Your audience will get used to the same messaging patterns and promotional offers after a while. If they start to feel they can predict the contents of every message they get from you, they’ll likely unsubscribe. How can you keep your marketing campaigns new and engaging?

Creativity and thinking outside the box are key! If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out these four campaign marketing ideas to get you started!

1. Send a Thank You Note . . . With a CTA!

Saying “thank you” is always a great policy, and this applies to messaging campaigns, too! When a customer purchases a product from you, send a follow-up message letting them know you appreciate it. Thank-yous are also welcome after appointments or service calls. Saying “thank you” lets your customers know that you understand they have options, and you’re grateful they chose your business.

However, your thank-you message doesn’t have to stop there! Try incorporating a call to action, or CTA, into your message to drive organic interaction with your business. You could ask customers for feedback on their recent purchase, showing that you care about their long-term satisfaction with your transaction. You can also offer an upgrade or accessory at a discounted rate, or send a free shipping coupon to use on the next purchase. Keep the conversation rolling after a successful transaction by guiding your customer towards their next step!

2. Create Seasonal Connections for Themed Campaigns

The changing seasons carry powerful emotional connections for many people. Some of us look forward to the coziness and festive atmosphere of winter, while others get excited for fall pumpkins and hayrides, summer vacations or spring gardens. Tap into these associations to capture your audience’s interest. Offering special deals, promotions, product spotlights or blog content can be a lot more fun when you make seasonal connections. You can even add emojis or images in multimedia messages for a fun, personal touch! Try incorporating phrases like the following:

• Brrrr! Are you ready for snow? Contact us today to get your furnace winter-ready!
• It’s almost time for flip flops, summer cocktails and beach reads! Is your smile ready for vacation photos? We’re offering 15% off whitening services all month!

Finding creative connections between your product or service and the time of year can boost your relevance in customers’ eyes.

3. Offer Fun Facts To Spark Readers’ Interest

A good messaging campaign has more to offer than just coupons and promotions. The purpose of messaging is to share information. Offering interesting, colorful and relevant informational content can keep your customers excited to open your messages and engage with your brand. Most people enjoy the feeling of learning something new, so tap into that desire by offering little-known facts or statistics that are relevant to your brand conversations. These examples may spark your creativity:

• Did you know that 65% of college students struggle to afford their required textbooks? We offer affordable, quality content to support you and your students. 
• On average, a bar of soap lasts 3x as long as a bottle of body wash. Want to get the most bang for your buck? Check out our new body bars in lavender, vanilla and citrus scents!

4. Appeal to Nostalgia

Nostalgia is in. Vintage clothing, movies and music are all making a comeback, and you can leverage this trend to connect with your audience’s interests. Open a discussion about how things used to be, and then transition to the present-day. Your readers will enjoy the blast from the past (especially if you add images to your message!), and they’ll feel a sense of connection between their generation and your brand. These examples illustrate the power of nostalgia:

• Remember lying in the yard trying to bleach your hair with lemon juice? You deserve the highlights you dreamed of in high school. Book a color appointment today!
• When it comes to romance, there’s nothing quite like a drive-in movie. With our projectors, you can recreate the experience in your backyard!

Reminding your customers of the past not only creates positive associations, but it also gives you the opportunity to highlight ways in which your products or services make life easier.

Are you ready to run more effective marketing campaigns through conversational messaging? Our customer support team can get you started. Contact us for a demo or a free trial!

Tips for Using Text Messaging for Healthcare and Wellness

1. Automate appointment scheduling.

Text messaging reduces appointment no-shows by 40%. You can make it easy for your clients and patients to book services with automated scheduling and reminders. The option to easily reschedule via text message prevents no-shows and by using automation you save time by not having to make changes manually.

2. Stay compliant with patient privacy.

By choosing a compliant and secure text messaging platform you’ll ensure that you are HIPAA compliant. A secure messaging platform with administrative functions to control settings on sending and receiving messages means you never have to stress about ensuring patient privacy. 

3. Share wellness tips.

SMS messages offer a natural way to converse with your clients. When you regularly reach out with relevant tips and information, you create a stronger relationship with your clients. Using SMS messages to share wellness tips is a powerful yet simple way to show your clients you care about them, their health and their well-being.

4. Streamline personalized healthcare communication and education.

Texting allows patients and caregivers to use rule-based messaging to send messages about health coaching, post-discharge care instructions, taking medications, or following special diets. This helps them stay on track with their personalized healthcare plans and recommendations. In fact, daily text messaging reminders have been shown to increase medication adherence by up to 68%.

5. Encourage patient participation in preventative healthcare.

Provide health tips, invitations to community wellness events, or recommend specific preventative screenings. By sending these on their preferred channel of text messaging they will be more likely to engage with your recommendations. 

The Bottom Line 

Patients and wellness clients expect personalized communication via text messaging. As the healthcare landscape changes to include many more virtual appointments and experiences, text messaging will play an integral role. If you haven’t yet adopted text messaging for your team and want to learn more, schedule a demo and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you, answer questions and show you what text messaging can do for your contact center.

Auto-responses immediately attend to patient requests, automated campaigns share wellness tips, product and services information and other wellness-related insights. SMS scheduling makes it simple to book appointments and an intuitive Inbox makes conversing 1:1 with clients as easy as can be.

We put together this infographic to give wellness providers a quick overview of how you will better serve your patients with SMS messages from SMS-Magic.

If you haven’t yet adopted business text messaging for your team and want to learn more, schedule a demo and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you, answer questions and show you what text messaging can do for your business results.

You know the drill: You schedule appointments with patients or clients, then you have to call to remind them. Your phone call goes to voicemail, so you send an email to make sure they get the reminder, only to have that email sit unread in their inbox. Or the patient does respond, but to reschedule their appointment at the last minute, leaving that time open that another patient could have used.

Using SMS messages to schedule appointments is more convenient for patients and more readily to be seen and responded to than voice mail or email. The result for your practice is far fewer missed appointments or last-minute cancellations.

• Communicate the way they prefer: Patients love the ease of scheduling an appointment or series of appointments with immediate confirmation texted back to their mobile device.
• Break through the noise: Since their phone is always with them, you’re more likely to reach them as they’re 6X more likely to read text messages than respond to any other communication channel.
• Make responding convenient: The ability to reschedule right from their smartphone means they can do so at their convenience, no matter where they are.

Your patients have busy lives. Your practice must optimize the time available for appointments to help your patients stay healthy and well. Text messaging offers a simple way to provide value to both your patients and your practice.

How to Schedule Appointments with Text Messaging

Scheduling appointments with messaging generally follows these steps.

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

Offer your patient an appointment calendar via SMS messages. Simply send a message to an individual (or a list of patients) that includes the link to your online scheduling application.

 

Automatically update the patient’s record. Your calendar application integrates with your CRM to update the patient’s record with the new appointment. This update triggers an automated message campaign for confirmation and reminders, taking the load off your front office staff.

 

Automate rescheduling when a patient has a conflict. When a patient replies #CHANGE, the rescheduling message flow is automatically triggered.

 

Automatically confirm the new appointment. When the patient reschedules, an updated confirmation message is sent, and the reminder process is restarted. Reminders can be set to automatically send at intervals you specify.

 

Use SMS Messages to Remind Patients of Other Needs

There are times when patients must bring documents to their appointments or take actions prior to their appointments. You may need to make a copy of their updated insurance card or have them fast before a lab test, for example. These reminders can also be automated via text messaging based on the type of appointment that’s scheduled.

 

The Bottom Line

Scheduling and confirming patient appointments has never been easier. Conversational text messaging will save your front office staff time and your patients will sense a higher level of care and attention. They’ll feel empowered to ask questions, reschedule appointments easily and remember what they need to do before—or bring with them—to their appointments.

You’ll have happier patients and a more efficient practice.

Even better, your clients and patients are more likely to read text messages than any other form of promotion, by a factor of 6 or more.

That means you can offer personalized promotions, conveniently delivered to their smart phone. Which makes your clients feel appreciated and special.

A number of our SMS-Magic messaging customers use conversational messaging to send updates and wellness promotions to their clients.

Here are some examples.

Reach More Patients with Wellness Promotions

Whether you’re a franchised drug store or a small family-owned health market, you can powerfully promote your wellness products and services using text messaging.

Promote new wellness products. Let’s say you have a new line of dermatology products designed just for women over 50. Here’s how you can use conversational text messaging to promote them.

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

First, segment your client list to include women over the age of 50. Store this list in your CRM.

Next, create the conversational messages you want to send to these women. You can send a straightforward SMS text or include an image and/or video in an MMS message.

You can send as many messages in the automated flow as you want. At any point that your client replies with a keyword or specific request to your messages, SMS-Magic will alert your sales team for a rapid response.

Promote New Wellness Services

Getting your clients’ attention to announce new services isn’t always easy. Sure, you can put up signs in your office. And your emails don’t get much of a response. That’s where messaging comes in. Messages get 6X the responses of emails, so your clients will get your announcements.

Just as with product promotions, automating new service announcements is easy. You follow the same steps. All you have to do is change the message content. If we take the message flow above, and tune it for a new services offering, here’s how it looks.

When someone clicks the link to schedule, Kim’s schedule is updated, and the following series of scheduling and reminder messages is automatically sent to the client.

Promoting your healthcare related products and services has never been easier, or more effective at driving more revenue for your business.

Use SMS Messages to Prompt Automatic Re-orders

You can send automated reminders to your clients for reorders or for annual scheduled events. For example, a compounding pharmacy sends refill reminders to their clients who order 3 month supplies of their pharmaceutical compounds.

Reminders via SMS messages make it easier for your clients to remember to re-order important healthcare products. You remind them, and that makes them come back to you for more services.

The Bottom Line

Promoting wellness products and services with SMS messages from SMS-Magic makes your clients feel appreciated and special. It also makes it easier for you to create a stronger relationship with each and every client, thanks to a personalized conversation promoting offers just for them.